A quick rant (and some praises)

I can't believe I wasted a trip to the Central Lending Library.

Sure, it was an SF-themed visit. That's why I picked up Simon Ings's Unplugged and Patrick Wood's YA novel Viaduct Child—what would a mind-upload be like? A teenaged girl in a dystopian London?

And guess what; I still don't know.

But my beef is that I wouldn't mind not knowing had I characters to care about—instead when the first twenty pages of each book yielded nothing interesting, I found myself flicking through pages after page, waiting for something you know... exciting to turn up. Something I understood.

I never found it.

It's one thing not to like a story's subject matter, or the way it is told—I survived Matthew Reilly's Seven Ancient Wonders... so it's not that I don't know how to appreciate a story!

But an SF novel, written by a famous author, not grabbing a reader in the first twenty pages?

Okay, I'm back from Reilly-land. But I think before we can care about a story and follow its characters through fire and flood, we have to at least know what that fire and flood entails, and how it fits into the grand scheme of things. Reilly tells us right off the bat that his heroes are in the running to obtain seven lost pieces of the Great Capstone and stop American and European teams from reciting a ritual in the Great Pyramid of Egypt that will bring a thousand years of world dominance to whoever does so.

Silly, I know. But we understand what's going on, and why it's so important for even an outlandish hero like Jack West, Jr. to succeed.

Which is why I read Unplugged and went... huh?

Surgically connected to their swarm of mechanical workers, architects Christopher and Joanne Yale were turning the Moon into a paradise. Now, without warning, their machines have pulled the plug.

Great.

Then I borrowed the book and read it at the pool. Yawn.

I didn't know anything more about main character Christopher Yale than I did from the blurb (the hook that induced me to borrow it in the first place). Cliffhangers? Descriptions of what it's like to command robots hooked to your brain?

Zilch.

I don't know what Ings was trying to focus on with his hero's neverending conversations, trips to a London I will never understand, and a narrator thinner than the book itself. Maybe I'm just not his target audience.

But I thought I was the target audience of Viaduct Child. We have Dushma, an unregistered orphan in a future London who lives with a Really Cruel Aunt, flees when police raid her apartment, then falls in with a gang of fellow outcasts.

Flip, flip, flip. I got three chapters in before I realised I was so bogged down in backstory I wasn't interested in the Dushma now, the Dushma who takes a stand and becomes worthy of the status of heroine.

Go read Eoin Colfer's The Supernaturalist instead. That book I read on the way to my camp—I was supposed to alight at Jurong East MRT, but my train went on to Boon Lay before I realised I'd missed my stop.

Now that's master storytelling. I just need to claim my taxi fare from Mr. Colfer's publishers...

# # #

I’ve just had another encounter with the customer-be-damned school of service provision.

I live in a street with just one road leading out onto the highway—one road that bottlenecks the entire neighbourhood and needs some judicious control of wheel and gears to exit. Hasn’t been a problem for my parents...

Until a tree ups and falls across the road. A freaking TREE.

So my mom is late for her classes, and as she frantically arranges make-up sessions and tries to book a taxi—you know, a car ride that can come up to a point bypassing the fallen tree and take you on your way—if the so-called “Customer Assistants” had actually bothered to answer my call instead of putting the line on hold for five. Entire. Minutes.

In this case the National Parks Board turned out to be way faster than CityCab—the tree was clear, but only AFTER a booking had been made without the help of whoever was supposed to answer the phone. (Please note, CityCab; an automatic booking system is SUPPOSED to reduce the number of calls you have to answer—so you will be able to take the calls that are really important. The calls the customer pushes 0 (“For assistance and advance booking”) instead of 1 (for auto-booking) to make.

CityCab, the press of 0 is to get your attention—more specifically, that of a human being who will--you know--assist. If you cannot provide that, why promise?

So fine. Problem is, we can’t take our custom elsewhere—without a car, taxis are much the only way to get to church on time, seeing my dad drives to golf every Sunday. Therefore no matter what, CityCab know their income stream from us is never in doubt. Whoever makes decisions up there is aware that no matter what, they can let us down in our hour of need with impunity—because we have no choice but to fork out the fare to go the church nearly every single week.

Like it or not, we’re stuck with CityCab, its never-ending on-hold music, and a five-time repeat of “Our Customer Assistant will attend to you shortly”. Never mind that “Customer Assistance” is a cruel joke, and the line doesn’t even connect half the time I dial the number (really, Comfort/CityCab, what is it with your phone system that dial-tones every other call we make?).

I haven’t even got started on the driver who finally showed up. Apparently professionalism had been thrown out the window—the tree was gone, my mom could drive, and the driver listened as I told her that.

Then: “We specially send a taxi for you, and then you cancel like this. Why didn’t you call and cancel the booking?”

I explained that we’d already tried. Many, many times. (Have I said “Customer Assistance” is a cruel joke?)

I’m still kicking myself for my truly slow wit—I’m only able to think of smart things to say LONG afterwards. What I should have said was: If the company “specially” sends a taxi for us, why don’t they answer our “special” call asking them to cancel?

She shot an angry sigh, waved dismissively and drove off.

So here’s my own experience with the sorry state of taxi services in our fine city. True, it works well enough—but you’d better not have to call their Customer Assistance. Their lack of attention to the phone lines is a clear signal to us: just get in line like the cash cows you are.